YOUTH 27 



me as best he could, but he did not have any 

 specimen to demonstrate with, and for some 

 reason I never had a lesson from him. 



My ambition was nevertheless formed, and to 

 goad it on, just at that time a gentleman presented 

 to Cornell University the first systematic collec- 

 tion of mounted birds that the museum of that 

 institution acquired. 



Green Smith, Esq., a son of the well-known 

 Gerrit Smith, was a gentleman of leisure, a good 

 sportsman, and had a keen interest in birds. Dur- 

 ing his many extended hunting trips he had 

 always collected specimens. His collection, for 

 the time, was remarkable. Many of his birds had 

 been mounted by John G. Bell, a very famous taxi- 

 dermist, a contemporary and friend of Audubon. 

 Bell had been in the field with that great pioneer 

 in American ornithology, and had assisted him in 

 his collecting. Green Smith's scientific knowledge 

 of birds was not profound ; I think his interest 

 in them was largely that of a sportsman. They 

 also aroused his aesthetic sensibility, always the 

 first appeal of nature. 



Shortly after I met him in the early spring, one 

 day I killed a little bird that was a dark olive- 

 green with more or less definite bars on each 

 wing, and with a bright orange crown sur- 

 rounded by a golden area, practically concealed 

 by the general olive-green feathers of the head. 



